The MP and former anti-domestic abuse charity worker said prostitution was “not a job like any other” and punishments must remain in place for the “pimps and punters” who “buy and sell other women’s bodies”.

But now a prostitute working in Bristol has contacted the Post saying the ‘Nordic model’ Debbonaire favours is more likely to leave prostitutes open to violence and rape.

Client criminalisation leads to sex workers having less time to suss out potential clients and whether they intend to cause us harm, because the client is keen to give the worker less info about himself, and to move the interaction into more private spaces where he is less in danger of being arrested.

Street sex workers are forced to make snap decisions and get into cars much more quickly than they otherwise would.

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You see this effect in the data – when the criminalisation of kerb-crawling was introduced in Scotland in 2008 (i.e. criminalising clients on the street), violence against street sex workers went up by 50 per cent in just the first six months of the law.

Do you work in a brothel in Bristol? What problems or risks do you face?

The main problems I face are the fear and risk of a police raid of the premises that I work at.

If the police came, there is no guarantee they would arrest just my manager – sex workers are arrested all the time for brothel-keeping offences, which can mean sharing a workspace with other sex workers for safety.

Of course, having a criminal record relating to prostitution would make it almost impossible for me to ever leave sex work.

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When the police raid premises they take everybody's money – all the money I had earned that day, and probably my phone too – no receipt, no way of getting it back.

When I deal with bad clients at work, I am not able to go to the police because of fearing for the safety of my current working situation. I'm not able to assert employment rights with regards to my manager in my workplace because there are no rights in a criminalised workplace.

The final big problem is dealing with middle class saviours trying to save me from my job, without ever actually doing something about the Bristol housing crisis, or the constant barrage of austerity, or the lack of other kinds of work that would pay the living wage. Criminalising my clients won't produce those things.

Criminalising brothel managers forces prostitutes out onto the street and into the arms of more dangerous clients (Image: Phil Watson)

How would you like to see these problems tackled?

I'd like to see these problems tackled through decriminalisation – in New Zealand, small groups of sex workers can work together indoors as an informal co-operative, without a manager. Under current UK law, or the Nordic model that Debonnaire wants, this set up would be criminalised.

But I am desperate to not work for a manager – it infuriates me to give a cut of my hard-earned money away.

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And under the New Zealand model, if you work for a manager, that manager is accountable to labour law – so managed sex workers have employment rights, for instance protecting them from sexual harassment in the workplace – like all other workers.

Prostitutes say criminalising their work makes them unsafe [picture posed by model]

Thangam says decriminalising prostitution could lead to sex workers being raped but the law would be unable to do anything about it, is she wrong?

Very wrong, if we looked to New Zealand, where sex work has been decriminalised since 2003, we can see instances where sex workers have taken abusive brothel managers to court for sexual harassment, and won damages.

And in fact New Zealand law includes a clause saying that whatever has been decided with a client, a worker can refuse sex with him – it is crystal clear that sex workers can be raped at work, and that this is against the law.

Sex workers are routinely unable to get any recourse for sexual assault under the Nordic model as the penalties for being a sex worker are so high: if the police in Sweden find out that you're a sex worker, they can have you evicted that same day. Amnesty International reports multiple instances of sex workers reporting rape or violent armed robbery, and being immediately evicted – often still with extreme injuries from their ordeal.

So sex workers simply cannot report – and perpetrators in Sweden and Norway know this; they know that the law makes sex workers intensely vulnerable.

Sarah challenged Thangam saying the 'New Zealand model', which allows small groups of prostitutes to work together, is the best solution.

Ms Debbonaire said prostitution was “not a job like any other” and punishments must remain in place for the “pimps and punters” who “buy and sell other women’s bodies”.

We just want to be in a situation where our work is recognised AS work.

Abusive managers would be more likely to face punishment for crimes of sexual assault and sexual harassment.

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When we’re not fearing for our own safety in outing themselves as sex workers, we are more likely to challenge managers and to go to the police when we experience abusive, manipulative or controlling behaviour.

Sex workers just want the work we are doing to be recognised as work, to be able to access the protection of labour law, and for people to stop insisting we either be poor voiceless victims at the hands of this mythical pimp lobby, or criminals ourselves.

Sarah said prostitutes have to make snap decisions about who's car to get into, legalisation would give them more time to 'suss out' clients

“Ms Debbonaire said research produced by the Police Foundation, a law and order think tank, showed women working in three-quarters of Bristol’s 65 brothels were subject to criminal behaviour – and sometimes worse. She said: “Women had been coerced, trafficked and forced,”

When you are in a situation where the place in which you work is criminalised, then by definition every single manager of any of these criminalised premises is a criminal, so by this way of thinking I would state that 100 percent of sex workers in Bristol’s brothels are subject to criminal behaviour from the moment we clock onto a shift.

When we take sex work out of a criminal framework, and when we remove brothel keeping laws which directly penalise sex workers who are looking to work together for safety, as currently a brothel is defined as two or more sex workers working from the same premises, we will move forward into a place where sex workers have the safety being able to work with friends without fearing arrest, with the freedom of not being managed by a third party.

By insisting that brothel keeping laws remain, client criminalisation advocates are complicit in upholding the framework which keeps sex workers working for abusive third parties, showing their supposed care for sex workers to be a front for what is actually complete un-interest [sic] in improving the real workplace situations of sex workers.

Sarah says prostitutes need labour rights like other workers

Does this tally with your experience or the experiences of sex workers you’ve talked to in Bristol?

Bristol sex workers are united in our knowledge that further criminalising our income and workplaces will not make us safer or give us more power.

We all know what the state of managed premises is currently like in this city – we regularly talk about management situations in different locations, and to think we all blindly go along with exploitation goes a long way to showing the low regards Thangam actually holds for us as workers in the city she is an MP for. We are workers campaigning for rights – you'd expect a politician in the Labour party to understand that, not refuse to see us.

By actively campaigning for us to continue to be forced to work either alone and at risk, or to buy into the safety of working with others, but at the cost of managers potentially abusing us, I would strongly question how many sex workers Thangam has met in this city, and perhaps more importantly, how highly she holds out opinions on our work – and if she is willing to let us inform her and correct her prejudice and hatred towards our existence?

The Bristol Post has contacted Thangam Debbonaire's office for a comment.